Friends of the Rhee
UPDATE: 30 March 2025 - First Testing session has been carried out. Results to follow!
UPDATE: 3 December 2024 - First River Rhee Monitoring Information Session
The first meeting for potential volunteers for the River Rhee monitoring project took place on line. A keen and well informed group talked about the reasons to monitor water quality in our local river, the local support offered by the network of organisations involved in river protection, and how the project intends to carry out monitoring for e.coli over the next 3 - 9 months. View all the slides from the event HERE.
Launched November 2024
About Friends of the Rhee
Friends of the Rhee was established in 2020 under the umbrella of the Haslingfield and Harlton Eco Group. For the next couple of years the group got to know the stretch of the River Rhee which runs past Haslingfield, conducting regular visual monitoring and water vole monitoring. In 2022 Friends of the Rhee installed a wooden sign-post by the Haslingfield path, which names the Rhee as a tributary of the Cam.
Last July, Lara Hawkins from Friends of the Rhee joined the Chair and Vice Chair of Haslingfield Parish Council for an informative tour of the Haslingfield Water Recycling Centre (or Sewage Works). The tour was facilitated by CamEO (Cam and Ely Ouse Partnership), and hosted and led by Anglian Water, with members from Cam Valley Forum (CVF) also in attendance.
We were given a thorough explanation of how the waste water from Haslingfield is treated, and the opportunity to put questions to the Anglian Water representatives who showed us around. We discussed the capacity of the Centre, sewage discharges into the river and plans for future improvements.
After that meeting Cam Valley Forum shared recent monitoring data from the Rhee which shows that if it were designated as a Bathing Water, it would receive a “Poor” rating, with advice not to swim. Haslingfield Parish Council (HPC) are keen to understand more about the water quality in the River Rhee so that they can provide guidance to Parishioners and visitors about the use of the river, in particular for activities such as fishing, bathing, paddling and dog walking.
Friends of the Rhee has therefore offered to co-ordinate a period of monitoring and testing of Rhee Water quality. The Parish Council have confirmed that there are some limited funds to support this work.
Would you like to help us by volunteering for this collaborative, citizen science project? Please call or email Lara Hawkins 01223 874524 / 07881 348429 or larahawkinshome@yahoo.co.uk.
Other ways you can help the river:
A huge problem at the moment is that during periods of heavy rainfall or storm events, the Water Recycling Centre becomes inundated with more water than it can treat, resulting in untreated waste water being discharged into the river. While the efficient running of the Centre is the responsibility of Anglian Water, there are measures that local residents can take to help reduce the problem of inundation, including:
• Only flushing toilet paper and human waste down the toilets. Items with the specific ‘fine to flush’ logo can also be flushed. Items that simply say ‘flushable’ should not be flushed.
• Laying down porous surfaces (e.g. gravel) rather than concrete for outdoor landscaping.
• When planning home or garden improvements, make sure any waste rainwater (e.g. from shed roofs/extensions) is directed into a soakaway in the garden, not channelled into the sewer.
• Considering having a ‘rain garden’, if you have the space – this is just a shallow dip in your garden, into which the run-off from roofs/hard standing is directed. It can be planted with water-loving plants.